~ Great Woods, 9846-9847, Adva ~
The year passed like water slipping through her fingers. It was present, but cold and impossible to hold.
Adva began measuring time in faces instead.
In the halfbreeds Draven brought to them one by one, cautious and tired, but carrying hope the way someone carried a wound.
In the way Calder sharpened himself alongside them, growing sharper too. He was becoming less patient and more certain.
Everything they did bent back to the same purpose: finding those willing to fight, not just survive.
She wasn't convinced that it would work. The idea itself felt fragile.
Halfbreeds standing together, openly, against laws written by gods who preferred the world neat and obedient? Strategy mattered, numbers mattered, timing mattered.
But Calder spoke as if will alone could bend the Ascended's gaze elsewhere, as if fury could substitute for preparation. Some days, Adva saw his certainty as bravery; other days, it felt reckless enough to get them all buried beneath the Great Woods.
And yet, she stayed.
She listened to him. She planned for him. She patched wounds and memorized names and learned who could be trusted with what truths for him.
If Calder was the fire, then she would be the water that kept it from spreading too far, too fast. Someone had to think past the first strike; someone had to imagine what came after because he couldn't.
Even when she doubted him, she never doubted what he wanted:
Freedom.
It wasn't a quiet thing. She knew that now. It scraped and clawed and demanded pieces of them in return. Calder understood that instinctively. Adva understood it cautiously.
Things between them were uneasy, but they were still standing.
Trying, she reminded herself.
She was still trying.